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thinking that the researcher is a totally independent entity in the research. It is both the feminist positioning of this research; my work both as an insider and outsider of organisational systems; and my observations of the power of organisational discourse as a vehicle for transformation that has resulted in my choice of method, namely discourse analysis, over and above another methodology. Another key characteristic of discourse analysis, according to Wertz (2011), is that analysts have an obligation to apply their research. This applied and action oriented approach to research lends itself to the field of OD practice. The method of discourse analysis and the rationale for its application to this study is discussed further in the following section.
6.3 Feminist Social Constructionism and the Method of Discourse Analysis
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psychological states are made relevant and publicly accountable (Burck 2005; Edwards 2006). A basic tenet of discourse analysis is that language is not a neutral or transparent medium through which people express themselves, but a vehicle to construct versions of their social world (Ali & Khan 2012; Burck 2005; Butler 1990; Gavey 2011). A discourse may relate to significant local patterns of talk, such as commonly used slang, or larger scale phenomena, such as sexist or racist discourse. Being able to recognise these patterns of talk draws from our immersion in a particular culture, while simultaneously our ability to stand outside of that culture (Terre Blanche et al. 2007b).
Social constructionism recognises the power of discourse and its ability to both construct knowledge and influence behaviour. Discourse analysts focus on the ways societal discourses are taken up in personal interactions and how discourse is shaped through power relationships (Burck 2005; Gill 2010; Derrida 1997; Foucault 1982;
Levett, Kottler, Burman & Parker, 1997). As a methodology commonly applied in systems oriented therapy, discourse analysis is concerned with the effect of discourse on social identity and relations, and systems of knowledge (Burck 2005). The relationship between power and organisational discourse is highlighted in the literature review in section 2.4.6 of chapter 2 in the discussion on organisational theory. It is therefore fitting that the phenomenon of power which is under scrutiny in this research is understood through analysis of the discourses evident in the text of women leaders, operating within the context of an organisational system.
Discourse analysis has its own complexities as it is a multi-dimensional analytical approach (Yang 2010). The model below (Figure 2) produced by Philips and Hardy (2002) highlights these dimensions:
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Figure 2. Different Approaches to Discourse Analysis (Phillips & Hardy 2002: 20) The model proposes two key dimensions to discourse analysis, namely the importance of text versus context in the research and the degree to which the research focusses on a critique of the discourse or on the processes of social construction of the phenomenon being researched. Philips & Hardy (2002) explain that a more critical approach is concerned with power dynamics as a focus in the research, whereas a more constructivist approach is concerned with the way social reality is constructed. In this research study while the focus is on language in the text, the implications of the language choices are related to the broader social contexts which the participants are part of, including factors highlighted by Wetherell, Taylor & Yates (2001), such as gender, race, social and cultural settings, as well as their position in the organisation.
The research is concerned with the ‘critical’ approach to discourse analysis, since as a feminist study it aims at illuminatining and reconstructing the operations of power at both conscious and less conscious levels. As with any model, however, the boundaries are not always discrete and authors such as Barry (2006) recommend a more flexible approach where researchers move between the linguistic and the critical. This is the approach adopted in this research study since its aim is to both deconstruct and reconstruct notions of power through analysis of women’s discourse. These are the two critical stances in discourse analysis, according to Gergen (2001), but they are able to be applied in parallel. On the one hand, the research aims at deconstructing and critiquing dominant discourses of power as performed through the interviewees’ text,
Critical Discourse Analysis
Interpretive Structuralism
Social Linguistic
Analysis Critical Linguistic
Analysis Context
Text
Constructivist Critical
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while simultaneously identifying the way in which participants construct power in unique and potentially transformative ways.
As much as the ‘critical’ approach may expose power dynamics that exist both within the text and the broader social context, the constructionist approach is particularly relevant to the construction of identity which forms part of this research where women are asked to narrate their experiences on their leadership identity. Gender identity itself is viewed by many feminists as a constructed concept, created by powerful groups, that becomes a shared ideology through complex social systems of knowledge creation that are reinforced and enacted by society and its institutions (Ali & Khan 2012). Language is viewed as the basic tool which constructs these identities and enables them to be realised within a system (Butler 1990). Theorists like Foucault (1982), and Butler (1990) shared the view that language seeks sameness rather than homogeneity and therefore gravitates to common and universally understood descriptors which usually seek social categorisation based on existing power relations. Typically much of the research in psychology is independent of social categories and identities which, according to Levitt et al. (1997: 7) subtly and effectively “reinscribes traditional systems of racial, cultural, gender and sexual privilege”. Llombart (1998) claims that when identity becomes a common point its effect is oppressive since it marginalises areas where individuals do not identify and makes it impossible for them to create meaning or bring about change in certain social contexts.
The link between language, power, identity and feminism was a significant consideration in choosing the method of discourse analysis of narratives. The post- modern theory and practice of Organisational Development as outlined in section 2.4 of chapter 2 of the literature review draws on a number of inter-disciplinary approaches in understanding group relations and transformation in organisational systems. Similarly the methodology of discourse analysis of narratives adopted in this research relies on methods used both in applied psychology and literary analysis. Burck (2005: 251) clarifies these links when she states:
“for researchers and systemic clinicians, the notion of ‘discursive practices’
addresses questions of agency through critically examining ways individuals position themselves and are positioned in and through language”.
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Unlike content analysis which serves to describe or explain a phenomenon, in discourse analysis the researcher is concerned with the linguistic effect of the texts under study to understand their consequences (Butler 1990; Burck 2005). It is in analysing the
‘linguistic turn’ of these women’s accounts that the research is able to identify and critique the discourses being constructed. The “linguistic turn” is defined as the way autobiographies, stories, myths and jokes are told by Cohen and Mallon (2001: 49). In analysing the “linguistic turn” which gives rise to certain discourses, meaning and effectiveness in language depends not on fixed meanings or clear expression, but on the roles that words and phrases take on in the “ language-games” (Gill 2010: 37) of our lives, and as we move from one context to others being able to recognise what it resembles. This allows for the contradictions and fractures within the discourses and the complex effects that they might have in bringing about change (Gavey 2011). The linguistic focus of this feminist research aims to use language as the key to being attuned to the real-world consequences of the texts produced by the interviews with women. In so doing, this focus aims to reveal emerging models which may be inaccessible through content analysis alone. The nature of the texts being analysed in this study are the women’s stories of their leadership journey and developing awareness of power. These narratives are generated and analysed following a rigorous research process which is outlined below. The reason for choosing a narrative approach in line with the aims of this research is also discussed.
6.3.1 Narrative Analysis as a form of Discourse Analysis
Since the stories of our past and present draw from our cultural framework for discourse (Butler 1990; McAdams 1996), the autobiographic narratives of women leaders is a valid vehicle for understanding how women construct their reality and their power within that. Feminist researchers such as bell hooks (2010) and Braxton (1989) argue that autobiography is a particularly apt way of telling and claiming ownership of one’s life and identity as it enables the author to tell their version of events through uninterrupted means. Braxton (1989) also highlights the fact that autobiography is empowering in that it asserts the ‘author’s’ identity and desired version of reality. As discussed in chapter 3 of the literature review of feminist perspectives on power, identity is not a one-dimensional or static concept, rather it is constituted and reconstituted through discourse within a particular context and for a particular audience
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(Cohen & Mallon 2001; Dickerson 2013; Ledwith 2009; Moses 2012; Nicholson 2012).
Hall (1996: 4) describes the link between this process of ‘becoming’ and representation in the construction of identity:
“Identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture as a process of becoming rather than being: not ‘who we are’ or ‘where we come from’ so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves.”
Narrative identity refers to the stories people construct and tell about themselves to define who they are for themselves and for others (McAdams et al. 2006a; Josselson in Wertz et al. 2011). Narrative analysis focuses on the way individuals present these accounts of themselves and views self-narrations both as constructions and claims of identity (Burcke 2005; Connelly 2000; Labov 1997; Linde 1993).The inner narration is described as a process of consciousness by McAdams et al. (2006a) and in itself is linked to the construction of power by the neuroscientist Damasio (1999: 30) who asserted that consciousness begins “when the brain acquires the power to tell a story”.
Denzin (1989) believes that a life story seems to be one of the psychological means to discover one’s developmental process throughout their life and is therefore an appropriate method to understand the models of power which may still be developing or forming as part of women’s identity or being brought into their consciousness and therefore are in an ‘emerging’ rather than an ‘entrenched’ state.
The protocol followed to solicit the autobiographical narratives is modelled on McAdams’ Life Story Interview (2001). This is a semi-structured interview and composed of several sections wherein the participant relates his or her past, present and future strategies. The goal of the interview is to construct an autobiography of the participant by focussing on life chapters, significant life episodes, role models, current challenges and future plans. McAdams (1996) claims that the life story captured in the interview represents the identity that contemporary adults form and preserve through continuous creation and maintenance of personal narrative throughout their life. This process is viewed as creating the link between a person’s past with their present and anticipated future, thus providing integration to their lived experience. Since the study focussed on power, the aim of the questions were to understand the integration of past,
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present and future constructions of the participants’ experience of power. The questions in the interview guide therefore followed the structure of McAdam’s Life Story interview guide (2001) and dealt with similar themes of questioning in each section.
The instrument was adapted, however, to ensure that the questions had a specific focus on power (Appendix 1). The rationale for the instrument will be described in more detail later in this chapter in section 6.4.1.
Using a narrative method for gathering data recognises that the ‘narrative identities’
which are constructed in the stories being told are multiple, socially constructed and evolving (McAdams et al. 2006a). This approach accommodates the issue raised by feminist theorists that women’s voices are multiple and diverse and their stories of power are woven into their socialised mental models (Gavey 2011; hooks 2003).
Gathering ‘narrative identities’ allows women to construct their identity in relation to power on their own terms, without any fixed notion of what constitutes the phenomenon. Furthermore Jameson (2001) observes that few studies within a business context combine a concern with everyday narratives related orally with an emphasis on their impact on the larger environment. The focus of this study is not only on the women leader’s power discourse within a South African business context, but also the implications of this discourse on culture transformation within their organisations. This focus is one of the unique contributions which the study will make to management research conducted with women in business leadership positions. The relationship between the narrative ‘text’ and this broader ‘context’ is discussed further in the section below on hermeneutics.
6.3.2 Hermeneutics in the Analysis of Texts
The research objectives both inform and are informed by the ideological framework of postmodern social constructivism within a feminist paradigm. The chosen method of narrative analysis as a form of discourse analysis provides the framework for the interview questions and the way it is analysed. However, within narrative analysis, as a subsidiary of discourse analysis, there are various ways in which texts can be ‘read’ and the analysis presented. The way texts are dealt with is referred to in postmodern literary criticism and philosophy as ‘hermeneutics’ (Stewart 1989). In dealing with the texts from interviews, the approach of social constructionists is to recognise the autonomy of
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these texts as well as the relationship with the context they exist in (Derrida 1997). The broader context within which the women’s narratives are located is the societal and organisational systems that they operate in. A more immediate context is the interview process and setting itself which positions them as significant leaders within their organisations with something to say on leadership and power. Due to the volume of the texts generated from the interviews, the focus of this analysis will be on the discourses across texts rather than each narrative per se. A more detailed discussion on this process of analysis is discussed in section 6.4.8 of this chapter. This approach of in-depth analysis of several stand-alone ‘mini-narratives’ within the context of the total autobiographical narrative, reflects a hermeneutic approach to the text.
Hermeneutics also refers to the way in which the parts of a given text relate to the whole (Freeman 2004). This is known in textual analysis as the “hermeneutic circle”
(Freeman 1997: 172). This frees the text, according to Ricoeur (1981: 202), not only from the author, but from the “narrowness of the dialogical situation” and “reveals the destination of discourse as projecting onto the world.” Josselson (2004, 2008) presents a tension within hermeneutics between ‘suspicious’ regard for the text, which focuses on critical analysis and reading between the lines, and a more ‘trusting’ approach which aims to be true to the text itself. Within the framework of discourse analysis, the focus is on a close reading of the linguistic turn of the text and the way in which the reader is receiving it, in relation to the commonly constructed discourses on power, feminism, leadership and transformation. This form of analysis is typically not as detailed as the close conversational analysis found in more psychoanalytic research. By applying hermeneutics to the text, the researcher aims at managing the tension between upholding a respect for the women participants’ words used to depict the multiple worlds that are their creation; as well as an ability to critique the implications of those creations in the concluding chapter (Freeman 2004; Josselson 2008).
The theoretical framework discussed in this section provides the rationale for the qualitative approach to the study within a social constructionist paradigm. In understanding and critically analysing South African women leaders’ emerging models of power, the qualitative social constructionist paradigm recognises the multiple constructions of power, generated through language and informed by society.
Incorporating the feminist framework into this paradigm allows for a sensitively and
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critically attuned reading of the autobiographical texts and the way in which language is used either to perpetuate the status quo or to reveal something alternative (Gavey 2011).
The use of a narrative method allows women to construct these realities through their autobiography and recognises the emergent nature and inter-relatedness of identity and power (hooks 2003; McAdams et al. 2006a). An understanding of the hermeneutics of textual analysis has a bearing on the way in which the researcher approaches and reads the text and enables both immersion and appreciation as a reader, as well as the distance and critique required of the analyst.